After a disappointing 8-19 season and a second consecutive seventh-place Ivy League campaign, Penn men’s basketball coach Steve Donahue was fired by Alanna Wren on Monday morning.

With tenures at Cornell, Boston College and Penn, Donahue’s 23-year overall record is 331-344. Through his nine years at Penn, the coach finished at 131-130 overall and 63-63 mark in league play.  

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily Pennsylvanian, all three of Donahue’s assistants, Nat Graham, Joe Milalich Jr., and Kris Saulny, have also been released by the university.

“Steve has been steadfast in his commitment to the program and the development of our student-athletes. I’ve always had great respect for his commitment to Ivy values, and he has been a strong representative of Penn during his career,” Wren noted in Penn Athletics’ news release. “Unfortunately, the competitive success on the court has not been up to our standards. While difficult, a change in leadership is necessary to provide the championship-caliber experience our student-athletes, alumni and fans expect.”

Penn’s previous athletic director, M. Grace Calhoun, hired Donahue after the disappointing coaching tenure of legendary player Jerome Allen. By the time Allen resigned in March 2015, the program was at an all-time low with three straight single-digit victory seasons and disciplinary problems with several of his players.

Donahue was viewed a logical choice given his successful 1990-2000 stint as an assistant to Fran Dunphy, the Quakers’ all-time leader in wins, and his decade at the helm of Cornell.

As the Big Red’s leader, Donahue captured Ivy League championships in 2008, 2009 and 2010, with his 2010 team making it all the way to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

Following Cornell’s successful run and his being named the Clair Bee Coach of the Year, Donahue was offered the head coaching job at Boston College and took the high-major jump.

Donahue first season in charge of Boston College was positive, with a fourth-place spot in the ACC and a win in the opening round of the 2011 NIT. Unfortunately, that was the high-water mark there for Donahue, whose teams fell to ninth, eighth and 13th place over the next three years, and he was let go at the end of the 2013-14 season.

Spending the next season working on college basketball broadcasts, the Springfield Township, Pa. native was ready to return to Penn and the head coaching ranks on March 16, 2015.

“An impressive group of candidates were thoroughly vetted, and Steve Donahue clearly rose to the top,” Calhoun noted in the press release announcing the hiring. “Coach Donahue is a nationally recognized coach and proven recruiter with unquestioned integrity. His deep knowledge of and appreciation for Penn basketball, the Ivy model of student-athlete development, and the Big Five were unparalleled in the search.”

Despite Penn’s best player, Tony Hicks, sitting out 2015-16 to preserve his last year of eligibility, which he ultimately used to play for Rick Pitino at Louisville, Donahue led the Quakers to an 11-17 season. His 5-9 record in the Ancient Eight was one better than the previous campaign and moved Penn up from eighth to fifth place.

The 2016-17 season brought the first-ever men’s Ivy League Tournament, in which the top four teams competed for the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Donahue’s squad lost its first six games of the league schedule, and many thought the Red and Blue wouldn’t make it to the inaugural tournament, which was to be hosted at the Palestra. The coach managed to push the right buttons, getting his team to victory in six of its last eight contests to claim the fourth spot in Ivy Madness.

The Quakers were a heavy underdog to 14-0 Princeton, but Penn held a 59-57 lead with 12 seconds to go and Matt Howard at the free-throw line for a one-and-one. Unfortunately, the honorable mention senior missed his first free throw, leading to a Tigers tip-in to send the game into overtime and an eventual Princeton 75-69 win.

Donahue’s squad learned valuable lessons from that heartbreaking defeat and bounced back with a 22-8 regular season in 2017-18.

That year’s team ended up tied for first in the Ancient Eight at 12-2, with Donahue being named Ivy League Coach of the Year for the fourth time in his career. He also had three players earning All-Ivy recognition: sophomore forward AJ Brodeur on the first team, sophomore guard Ryan Betley on the second team and senior guard Darnell Forman for honorable mention.

As the No. 2 seed at that year’s Ivy League Tournament, again held at the Palestra, the Quakers dominated Yale, 80-57, in the semifinal and won a battle against top-seeded Harvard, 68-65, to claim the program’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 2007.

Following that triumph, the Red and Blue was given a matchup against No. 1 Kansas in Wichita and fell 76-60 in the opening round.

Hopes were high for the future of Donahue’s program, but that year would prove to be the high point.

The Quakers went 19-12 in 2018-19, in part due to a season-ending injury to Betley on opening night. The team went 7-7 in league play and managed to get the No. 4 seed over Brown and Cornell due to tiebreaking rules. The Red and Blue stayed close to top-seeded Harvard for most of the Ivy League Tournament semifinal, but the Crimson were too strong and won by eight.

Donahue’s next team had talent, reflected by nonconference wins over Alabama, Providence, UCF and Temple, but a sweep by Princeton and losing four of five league games again put the Quakers hopes for a bid to Ivy Madness in doubt.

The coach again got his players to refocus late in the year, and a three-game winning streak propelled his team to an 8-6 Ivy record and a tiebreak victory over Brown for the No. 4 seed.

Despite the low seed, Donahue and his team looked forward to the conference tournament due to the late winning streak, as well as the presence of Player of the Year Brodeur and Rookie of the Year Jordan Dingle.  Unfortunately, no one will know if the Quakers could have pulled off two upsets, since the tournament was cancelled by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the league canceled the 2020-21 season due to the continued pandemic, Donahue’s squad struggled in nonconference play and finished the first half of the year at 3-10.

The Quakers picked things up in the second half, starting league play at 8-2, but losses in three of its last four games, coinciding with a late-season injury to Jelani Williams, the best defender and emotional leader, gave Donahue’s 9-5 team the No. 3 seed against Yale.

Similar to the 2019 Ivy Tournament, the Quakers held the No. 3 Elis close throughout the contest but couldn’t come up with a big bucket late and went down to defeat 67-61. 

The external pressure started to mount in 2022-23, as Donahue’s team started the year 9-11 and 2-4 in the Ivies. Again, the coach got his players to flip the script later in the year and his players won eight in a row, including seven in league play.

Penn arrived at Jadwin Gymnasium tied with Princeton and Yale for first place heading into the last game of the year and held a 42-25 lead at halftime. Like many of Donahue’s previous games against the Ancient Eight’s upper echelon, the Quakers couldn’t get late baskets, and the team fell to its longtime rivals in overtime. 

The Red and Blue went back to Jadwin one week later for an Ivy tourney matchup against those same Tigers hoping to write a new chapter. Unfortunately, for Donahue and his program, it was another close opening-round loss.

Even in defeat, there was optimism for 2022-23 with the return of Dingle, the nation’s second-leading scorer and reigning Ivy League Player of the Year, as well as honorable mention guard Max Martz. That was quickly dashed with two pieces of devastating news.

The first was the transfer of Dingle to St. John’s. In the new era of transfers not having to sit out for a season and Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) money, the rising senior decided to forgo his Penn degree and increases his professional chances by playing for Pitino, now coaching the Red Storm.

The second was the announcement that Martz was retiring for medical reasons.

Without Donahue’s top two players gone, and an injury to his other star, Clark Slajchert, that kept the speedy guard out for a number of games in the Ivy League season, the Quakers hobbled to a 11-18 season and 3-11 Ancient Eight campaign.

The transfer portal and NIL again took their toll on Donahue when his talented rookie Tyler Perkins, who helped the Red and Blue pull off an upset of Villanova early in the season, decided to leave West Philadelphia for a spot with the Main Line’s Big East program.

To his credit, Donahue was adept at the portal, bringing in several Division I and junior college transfers, but his roster was not as strong as those in the upper division of the conference and the Quakers finished this last season at 8-19 and 4-10 in the Ivies. To make matters worse, the campaign ended with a 95-71 defeat on the road to Princeton, leaving Donahue with a 13-game losing streak to Penn’s historic rivals and an overall record against the Tigers to 2-18.

With Donahue gone, Wren now faces the biggest coaching decision her career and has enlisted Parker Executive Search to assist her. To make a difficult decision that much harder, Penn’s AD will have to do battle with Columbia, which is also in the market for a new leader following Jim Engles’ decision to step down.

Many expect Wren’s search to include coaches from the Penn tree, like Dave Klatsky of NYU, Matt Langel of Colgate, Andy Tooler of Robert Morris, Fran McCaffery of Iowa or Ira Bowman of Auburn, whom Wren reportedly considered for the Johns Hopkins job when she was the Blue Jays’ AD, as well as successful Ivy assistants like Princeton’s Brett MacConnell, Yale’s Matt Kingsley or Yale’s Justin Simon. She could also go with a D-III coach without any Ivy connections, which certainly worked out well for Princeton women’s basketball.

Despite the limited number of banners and results of the last several seasons, Donahue and his 20 years at the Palestra will be a significant part of Penn basketball history. Through his time in the lead chair, he always had the respect of his players and the Quaker faithful, who appreciated the way the coach brought integrity back to the program and fielded teams with hard working players who respectfully represented the university.